“A real problem for Russia”
Suddenly China strikes
Updated on 20.08.2025 – 5:54 p.m.Lesedauer: 2 min.
According to Trump’s punitive tariffs against India, Putin’s oil industry faces a challenge. China uses the opportunity – and buys oil at the ridicule price.
The shock was great in the Indian economy: At the beginning of August, US President Donald Trump announced a doubling of the tariffs to the Asian country-from 25 to 50 percent. The reason: India receives oil from Russia. Trump even spoke of the country supporting Putin’s “war machine”. As a result, India drove back its oil imports from Russia.
Putin’s regime quickly tried to limit damage. The raw oil imports would soon reach the old level again, assured Roman Babuschkin, business authority of the Russian embassy in Neu-Delhi. There is a “very, very special mechanism”. Babuschkin did not explain what it looks like.
However, analysts have now found conspicuous market movements that could provide information about how Putin’s oil exports could continue. According to several US media, Russia only records a fraction of the losses, which would have been expected after the Indian orders were lost.
The new customer: China. The East Asians also decrease large amounts of Russian oil under normal circumstances. Beijing is the largest importer of Russian oil worldwide, but mostly obtains this from the geographically obvious east of Russia.
But suddenly the Chinese also import larger quantities from the west of Russia – from where the deliveries are normally loaded to India. 75,000 barrels of the Urals variety are currently exported to China a day, before that it was 40,000. India still receives 400,000 barrels a day from the Russian west – but the average here was almost 1.2 million barrels a day. A barrel corresponds to 159 liters of crude oil.
In the striking buying behavior, however, experts do not see a friendship service XI Jinpings to Wladimir Putin, but pragmatic calculation of the Chinese: Due to the failure of the Indians as major customers, Urals sellers are forced to offer their oil at reduced prices. The conclusion of the analysts: China sees India and Russia the opportunity to use cheap crude oil.
“At the moment this is a very good opportunity for the Chinese,” explains analyst Muyu Xu to the US broadcaster CNN. “In the coming weeks, even more refineries in China could come up with the same idea and take advantage of the low prices.” Muyu Xu does not believe that Chinese opportunism can help Putin in the long term: “If India has to hold back further, this will be a real problem for Russia. China cannot fill this gap alone.”
Beijing can make purchases in Russia relatively relaxed: Unlike India, China from Trump’s punitive tariffs have been spared Putin’s trade so far. UN data show that China’s oil imports fill Putin’s war treasure even more than the imports of India: in 2024 China bought Russian oil for almost $ 63 billion, India imported oil for $ 53 billion.
